Korean War veteran Merrill Newman walks with his wife and son through San Francisco International Airport after his flight home from Beijing following two months as a captive in North Korea. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

We’re glad Merrill Newman is home. The 85-year-old veteran was released by Pyongyang after being held a month in captivity and signing a confession that he’d committed war crimes more than 60 years ago.

At the Demilitarized Zone on the border between the warring Koreas, Vice President Joe Biden rightly said the North “released someone they should never have had in the first place.” He also rightly called upon the Communist regime to release another American it has been holding, imprisoned pastor Kenneth Bae.

The problem is that the vice president’s appearance at the DMZ at this time only underscores America’s impotence. The North Koreans got what they wanted by humiliating Newman — to tweak Uncle Sam’s nose in plain view of the world. And it looks as if they will pay no price.

When Obama was first elected, he spoke and behaved as though all America’s problems in the world could be attributed to George W. Bush. Now he’s finding the world’s thugs don’t regard him as any better. That is the nature of their regimes, and we hope the president is taking the lesson.

Like his father and grandfather, dictators before him, Kim Jong-Un is a nasty piece of work. In addition to his ambitious weapons-testing, this is a man who a few months ago had his old girlfriend executed, and latest reports are that North Korea has just gone through a new round of public executions.

Clearly Kim feels quite comfortable in his new position. And so long as he has nothing to fear, he is going to give us more problems.